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Giving It: What to Teach and How to Teach It

planning it The Giving It stage of B-SLIM is where the teacher chooses WHAT to teach and HOW to present it. Teachers also consider how to attract students attention and memories by building on what students already know and choosing and structuring learning into small steps to teach the “new” material. In this stage, teachers present material in the target language in a way that students understand, which involves the provision of context, visuals, gestures, examples and anecdotes. In addition to knowing WHAT to teach, teachers need to be aware of HOW to present the material considering Miller's magical Number (7 +/- 2), Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, and memory aids.

Pushed Output:

Pushed output refers to what and how the teacher encourages students to use the new language. For example, in classes where teachers offer praise and encouragement, most students will quickly learn basic adjectives such as good, great or super. Then they will use them over and over again instead of learning/using other adjectives that they have learned, such as “fantastic”, “excellent”, “wonderful”. Through structured activities teachers can ‘push’ (nudge, make) students use these new words, too. For example, the teacher might write six to nine adjectives on the board for students to use in a pair activity. After one or two rounds of the activity, the high frequency words are crossed out but the activity continues. Students must now become comfortable using the other words.

What to Present:

In addition to knowing HOW to present the material, teachers also need to know WHAT to present. Research suggests that language production is a complex enterprise that entails the integration of many areas: language awareness, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency-accuracy, culture and Culture, learning strategies, listening comprehension, speaking, writing, reading, forms, skills, content, motivation-attitude, content.